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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30084372">Time + Space + Kismet</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/An_Ode/pseuds/An_Ode'>An_Ode</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>MacGyver (TV 2016)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(always), Angst, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Introspection, cursing, ongoing, post 5.10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 20:41:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,824</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30084372</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/An_Ode/pseuds/An_Ode</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The recording goes on and Riley slides her eyes shut, unable to do anything but let it sweep through her. She thinks about mud baths and moving out of his house, and putting herself through fucking hell to avoid that exact look.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Riley Davis/Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>156</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Riley</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I've seen maybe half of this show's run, and recently watched 5.10 with like no context, but was compelled by the burning desire for Riley Davis to get a fucking break.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She feels it slam through her, the drudging realization that this will change everything between all of them. Mac’s face, <em>god</em>, his face. Angus MacGyver may be the genius’ genius, but the man’s thicker than a brick wall more days than not.</p><p>“Desi–” she begins but is rebuked.</p><p>The recording goes on, and Riley slides her eyes shut, unable to do anything but let it sweep through her. <em>Fuck. </em>She thinks about mud baths and moving out of his house, and putting herself through fucking hell to avoid that <em>exact look</em>.</p><p>She refuses to turn her eyes on Mac again, she can’t. Murdock is still monologuing, and everything is slowly closing in and around itself in her gut. The protective instinct to curl inward can’t be ignored when your entire barrage of deepest darkest secrets are gliding along the airwaves for all the worst people to hear.</p><p>She’d been doing so well too. The pain of losing him to someone else had lessened to a dull ache and while Bozer’s warning had made it flare, she’d recognized it as manageable. Riley’s been living in pain her entire life, so it stands to reason that life wouldn’t actually be all that different.</p><p>But this moment is different, it’s monumental, and it’s absolutely soul destroying.</p><p>Riley is tougher than most, had to be, practically raised herself while trying to raise her friends. Then prison had left her different, harder, sharper around the edges. And then Mac had swept in like he’d been fascinated by the idea of any prison being secure for him.  </p><p>And then they’d saved the world.</p><p>It had changed her life; he had changed her life. He and Jack.</p><p>Riley pushes that name and that face and every memory she’d ever had with him out of her mind immediately. There isn’t enough room in the goddamn ocean for that shit. Instead she focuses on staying alive.</p><p>Murdock is defeated, on livestream no less, and the mission ends and then there is nothing but them. The last thing on earth she wants to do is talk about it, so she makes sure to speak in quick, reassuring sentences. She’d made the decision the second Desi spoke after her voice came over the airwaves.</p><p>Discussing her feelings is entirely unnecessary, apparently, because he seems entirely unperturbed. <em>Fuck,</em> he didn’t even blink. Riley tries to let that be a comfort, but it feels more like a confirmation and it hurts so much worse than she’d expected it would.</p><p>The flight home is a blur, the silence permeating the plane unlike anything she’s ever had to suffer through. There have been tense silences amongst their group, but nothing like this. She just closes her eyes, leans back in the chair, and tries to pretend like her two closest relationships didn’t just get sucked into a jet turbine.</p><p>When they reach Phoenix, when they’ve had their debrief, she slips out so fucking fast she thinks it’ll cause whiplash. The ride to her house is also silent and so is her apartment, but it’s a better silence, a safe one.</p><p>She is finally, blissfully, alone.</p><p>She doesn’t break down sobbing, doesn’t let the maelstrom loose, no matter how hard it rages in her chest. Riley Davis doesn’t have breakdowns over men, even if those men hurt her, leave her, cheat on her, she keeps it together. She’s been doing it all her life. Riley Davis survived an abusive father, prison, her adopted father’s murder, every team she’d ever had turning on her, and a metric ton of other shit.</p><p>She can handle her friend learning about feelings <em>she used to have</em>.</p><p>But the crux of every fucking problem she’s had over the past year is that use of past tense. Because she didn’t <em>used to have</em> feelings; she just has them. Still. Despite everything.</p><p>If she had any choice in the matter, Riley would’ve cut them off the second they sprouted. She’d tried, got her hands in the dirt to dig them out at the root. Mud under her nails, palms scratched to hell, she’d finally gotten there, to the very core of it and…</p><p>It was inoperable.</p><p>Her feelings for Mac had been wrapped around too much other shit in her head. Pain and loss and grief and having her trust broken, over and over and over again. Her father, Billy, Aubrey, <em>Jack</em>.</p><p>She knows the debate on causation vs. correlation, but for once she thinks such fights can be put to rest. Riley can pinpoint causation when it’s staring her in the face. She is the catalyst; she always was. Her father leaving, prison, the shit that’s gone down over the past few years at the Phoenix Foundation. But it didn’t matter, not really. She’d unearthed the truth and it left her with even less options than she’d had before.</p><p>Riles <em>wants</em> to rely on someone, wants to know that someone gives a shit beyond themselves, for her. No one had fit that bill yet. Maybe no one ever would. Because even Mac, adorable and loyal Mac, had left her the same as all the others, walked out of her life on a regular basis, moved countries without a word. And she’d understood each time, she really had, but that didn’t change facts.</p><p>She needs time, that’s all. Maybe they all do.</p><p>Riley jumps at the sound of a phone ringing. Clearing her throat and blinking back the tears lining her eyes, she answers.</p><p>“Matty?”</p><p>“Hey,” she pauses, and Riley feels every cell in her body tense.</p><p>“What’s up?” She finally prompts when her boss’ silence stretches too long.</p><p>“We’ve got a situation in Belarus. A military’s experimental lab has been hacked. I know you just got back, but they need exper–”</p><p>“No, don’t worry about it. I’ll be ready to go in an hour.”</p><p>“Thanks, Riley. I’ll send an agent to pick you up.”</p><p>“When are we headed out,” she asks, hitting the speakerphone button before beginning to pack away her laptop and gear.</p><p>“Just you,” Riley freezes, eyes turning back to look over her shoulder at the phone.</p><p>“Matty…”</p><p>“I think a little time away will do you some good,” she says it gently, but Riley knows it’s not a request. “Agent will be there in an hour. Good luck.”</p><p>And so Riley is left standing there, HDMI chord in hand, eyes still staring at the quiet phone. Shaking herself out of it, she pushes everything else aside and focuses her attention on the bag she’s packing. When her phone dings with more information a minute later, she’s glad to find details to absorb herself in while she waits.</p><p>When the knock comes, she doesn’t think twice about opening it. Half distracted by the strap on her backpack, she doesn’t realize who it is and starts speaking immediately.</p><p>“Ready! Do you know when wheels up is sch–” the agent at her door clears his throat and her head snaps up.</p><p>“Mac,” she states dumbly caught by the look he’s sporting, eyes locked on her backpack. His hands clench before smoothing out an invisible wrinkle on his shirt.</p><p>“Uh, going somewhere?”</p><p>“Matty called,” she says slowly, grip on her backpack strap tripling. Just like her heartrate at his adorably confused expression.</p><p>“She didn’t call–”</p><p>“Just me,” she cuts off, not wanting to know where he’d gone off to after reassuring himself she wasn’t going to be a problem and getting his ring back for Desi. “Hacker stuff, you wouldn’t understand.” She softens the barb with a teasing tone and smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.</p><p>“Oh, uh, I can give you a lift to Phoenix,” he offers, hands suddenly disappearing inside his jean pockets.</p><p>“Thanks but she’s sending an agent over. Leaving straight for the airport.”</p><p>Taking the last step over her apartment’s threshold, she forces Mac to take a few steps back so she can shut her door and lock it. Her back is to him and it’s saving her life because her hands won’t stop shaking. Even with eyes fixed on the deadbolt, all she sees is the expression he’d let slip at the word <em>airport</em>.</p><p>“How long will you be gone?” He tries to ask it casually, but there’s something in his voice. Riley ignores it.</p><p>“Don’t know yet. Damage is pretty severe, might take a few days.” It’s a lie. The damage is minimal, but she can’t think of anything she wants to do less than give him an arrival date to try and make plans to talk.</p><p>“Well, they’ve got the best hacker in the world on their side, I think they’ll be fine.”</p><p>Riley turns then and finds Mac’s eyes glued to the apartment building door he must’ve just come through. His jaw is locked tight, and when she flicks her eyes down, she sees the movement in his pocket. Dollars to donuts he’s got a paperclip in there and is fiddling.</p><p>“Well–”</p><p>“I just–”</p><p>They both speak at the same time, both stopping to allow the other person the floor. They realize what they’ve both done simultaneously. Mac chuckles, head bowing low, a hard shake of his head. Riley lets out a dry chuckle, trying not to draw too much attention.</p><p>Riley feels obligated to say something reassuring, something about how her heart is fine and he doesn’t owe her anything, to just let it go. But the words don’t come, her tongue nothing but led in her mouth. She’s so tired of feeling like shit because her heart rate increases every time she looks at him. It’s not her choice, alright? If it was, this thing in her chest would’ve been dead a long time ago.</p><p>“Riley,” his voice brings her back, eyes shooting his way at the tenor. “I didn’t… I didn’t <em>know</em>.” He says it so desperately, instinct has her moving closer, brows furrowing at the pain lacing every word.</p><p>Then she remembers what they’re in reference to and every muscle hardens. Her hand drops back to her side and she flicks her gaze out the front glass door, watching a classic black SUV pull up. Riley hasn’t believed in god for a very long time, but she sends a prayer of thanks to the universe for the timing regardless.</p><p>“I know Mac, it’s okay,” she says halfheartedly, eyeing her exit route.</p><p>“No,” he’s shaking his head, stepping forward, hands out of his pockets. “That’s not… I didn’t mean, I mean I–”</p><p>“My rides here,” she cuts off, body swaying back as he takes another step forward. “I’m okay Mac, we’re good. I’ll see you when I get back, okay?”</p><p>She doesn’t normally think of herself as cowardly, but the full sprint she does to the agent’s awaiting car has no better description. When she slams the door shut, shucking her backpack into the empty seat beside her, she doesn’t look back. He’d called her name half way to the car, but she’d barely registered the sound.</p><p>“You alright there agent Davis?” Ginny Torres has been with driving and security since before Riley’s time. She’s good people.</p><p>“I’m good, Gin. Just ready to get some space.”</p><p>“Yeah,” she says, tone dubious. “L.A. can really get to ya.” Ginny is throwing her a pointed look and she’s utterly right to do so.</p><p>“Exactly,” Riley says, nodding in casual agreement. “Need to clear my head.” A snort sounds from the driver’s seat.</p><p>“Good luck with that agent Davis.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Mac</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Mac's thoughts on this shit show. Canon stupidity.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I figured I needed a perspective chapter for each of the three.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Mac was a kid, his grandfather was constantly reminding him to never give up, on anything, <em>ever</em>. The idea kept him alive through every curve ball thrown his way. Through his mother’s death, his father’s abandonment, leaving MIT, the Ghost, Nikki’s supposed murder, on and on and on.</p><p>People love to tell him how special he is because <em>he never gives up</em>. They praise how his mind can find even the most obscure of solutions. Worse, they act like his actions are these monumental examples of altruism.</p><p>No matter what they try and sell, Mac knows the truth. He isn’t a good guy, isn’t a boy scout. Not really. They look at him and think he’s stable, reliable.</p><p>The truth is he’s nothing more than a badly constructed house of cards. The few precious things he’s holding up balance precariously, and he knows, just knows, <em>bone deep</em>, that the moment he lets one thing go, the whole stack will collapse. It’s simple: Mac never gives up because he has no other alternative.</p><p>So no, he’s not some selfless martyr, he’s just a selfish bastard. He’s known that for years.</p><p>In the days when he was still sitting on his grandfather’s knee, his brain was just his brain. There was no real judgment or emotion behind that, it was just fact. But then he got older, and he realized it wasn’t just his brain, it was <em>everyone’s</em> brain.</p><p>He had been given a gift, that he heard repeatedly and emphatically and never doubted, and that gift was meant for the betterment of everyone. It had propelled him into MIT, the Army, the Phoenix. His mind was not just for him, it couldn’t be, not when he could solve problems and help people in a way very few could. In a world where he gave so much, he’d justified that there would be certain things he couldn’t let go of, certain people he couldn’t let go of.</p><p>He considered so little as truly his that the precious few things he kept balanced on his house of cards became more than important, they became <em>integral</em>. They were atop that house, his team, the fixture that kept him buoyant in a time when letting himself drown had become more than a last resort.</p><p>He kept an eye out, intervened, provided in ways that kept things running smoothly. Fixing Bozer’s blender, looking at Desi’s car, getting new computer equipment in the lab for Riley; they were small things, often done without a word.</p><p>He knows it’s wrong to entrap them quietly, to stealthily combat any moves they make to move on, pulling strings to keep them happy so they will stay. He knows it’s wrong when he’s walked away from them time and again himself, but he can’t bring himself to stop.</p><p>And he knows this even more now, because despite what he should probably be thinking about as Murdock replays her and Bozer’s conversation, all he can do is imagine what a life with Riley Davis would look like.</p><p>It unfolds perfectly, like the precisely steamed maps his father kept in his ancient roll top desk. They’d lived together, so he already knew what she was like first thing in the morning, her preferred brand of everything, how she liked to keep the temperature low at night but warm in the day.</p><p>These memories set a solid foundation, so it isn’t hard to switch out a few key details here and there to change the scene. It’s just a matter of imagining what would’ve happened if he’d followed through on his natural impulses.</p><p>Most were small things. A touch at the small of her back, closing the distance he normally left when looking over her shoulder, running a hand down her arm to hold her hand, the small affectionate things he’d trained himself not to do.</p><p>To imagine the small things, of course, leads to imagining the big things.</p><p>Their hands entangled as they head for bed, waking up wrapped around her, the endless projects he would make her help him with, the countless clap backs she’d send his way when he tries to convince her to go on a run with him.</p><p>Suddenly, it doesn’t seem so outlandish, living life with Riley Davis, but he knows they don’t have time to talk about it right now. Murdock is on a rampage and the ground is <em>literally crumbling</em> <em>beneath them</em>, not quite the backdrop for these kinds of things.</p><p>When he touches the ring tucked innocuously into his pocket, it burns him.</p><p>They save the world, <em>again</em>, and somehow they’re standing outside a half-toppled building, her eyes never meeting his for longer than a flash. She looks so guilty standing in front of him like she is, as if admitting to ever having feelings for him is a capital offense. Every word she says hits like an electric shock, and his whole body lights up like an antique switch board when she utters the phrase <em>real feelings</em>.</p><p>And then she keeps going and she’s saying that she'd buried them down until they went away. The calculation whirls in his mind, half his brainpower having gone to processing every word, every look, every moment he’d even been within eyeline of Riley Davis. This new information hits the data set and spits out… pain.</p><p>Riley’s got her whole face turned away from him and it’s clicking into place. The use of past tense, the embarrassment, her lack of warmth; these are feelings that no longer exist. The realization sends a searing pain to his gut and he doesn’t know why.</p><p>He needs to touch her.</p><p>Like a command, energy arcs through him and suddenly he’s moving forward, half forgotten words on his lips trying to placate, to paint it as no big deal. That isn’t what he wants to say at all, but he can’t quite form words when the only thing he can think about is how far away from him she feels.</p><p>Stepping into her personal space isn’t so much a decision as it is a compulsion, and then she’s pressed tight to his chest and whatever tattered thoughts he’s trying to cobble together scatter. They always do when she touches him.</p><p>The plane ride is crushingly silent. Riley had put headphones on the second they boarded and settled in. He doesn't blame her, but he does study her from the corner of his eye.</p><p>Facts and data and anecdotes filter through his mind and he begins the process of reevaluation for his mental data set. He pulls up the file labeled <em>Davis, Riley</em> first. The file contains barebone facts, dry information about where she was born and how long she was in prison. He sorts through to build a sketched model of who she is.</p><p>Then he overlays that with everything from a different file, the one tucked safely in the back of his head where he has to work to reach it. It’s simply labeled <em>Riles</em> and he hasn’t opened it since sitting with Desi at the graveyard.</p><p>Things start to fit into place slowly but surely. By the time they’ve landed he thinks he’s identified those moments he thought were just moments to him. It’s perplexing, that she hadn’t ever figured him out. Almost as crazy as not figuring her out.</p><p>Mac doesn’t beat himself up too bad for that. She is an utter mystery wrapped in an enigma. That day in prison, he’d unlocked her cuffs like a child showing off for the new girl in class, and it had worked. He’d watched her eyes light up, heard her tease Jack and he’d known. She plays it cool, does an excellent job of pretending she’s a simple woman, but Riley Davis is anything but simple.</p><p>When she practically breaks the land speed record on her way out of the building he thinks it’s the only thing that feels normal about her today. He heads for the lab, a conversation he realizes Bozer had been trying to have with him for over a year now long overdue. Finding him is easy, especially when he’s looking at him like that, in the first place Mac would check.</p><p>“She’s gone Mac,” his voice shakes, and Mac shakes with it.</p><p>“I’m so sorry, Boze.”</p><p>Mac drives him, the small stories his friend gets out between choked sobs are painful but cathartic. Mac can’t judge, the last thing MacGyver men are known for is mental health and self-awareness.</p><p>It takes his mind off it for a while, staying up with Boze. They have a few drinks until his oldest friend more or less passes out mid-story, right there on the couch. After cleaning up after them and draping a blanket across a snoring Bozer, there is nothing left for him to do.</p><p>Puttering brings him outside, eyes looking out over the skyline. One hand absently dives into his pocket, calloused fingertips catching on the prongs holding the homemade diamond.</p><p>He can honestly say that he’s just as sure about his plan to marry Desi now as he was before today. Not that what Riley had said in that recording and to him hadn’t made his brain bluescreen. In fact, that’s the problem: he doesn’t feel any more or less settled about a life-altering decision when he’s just learned some life-altering news. So as his mind throws shit proposal lines his way, he bats them away with nothing but annoyance streaking through as the cold metal presses into his palm.</p><p>He needs to see her.</p><p>They need to talk it over, completely, he needs more than a simple explanation, burial, and final death knell. He just needs more than that. There is probably a lot to be said for him not being entitled to shit, but it’s not enough to stop him from standing up and striding for the front door.</p><p>Selfish bastard and all that, but he’d happily accept that if it got him–– he breaks that line of thought, it's shadow just a little to large. </p><p>Boze is still asleep on his couch and with a few quick moves to set out ibuprofen and orange juice, he slips out the door. As he juggles his keys, eyeing the car in the driveway, he shakes his head and tucks them back into his pocket. A walk will do, help to clear his head.</p><p>It doesn’t.</p><p>He ends up outside her apartment building with no idea how he got there. She doesn’t belong here, it’s not nearly good enough to house Riley Davis. A particularly strong revulsion to nearly everything about it rears up in him the longer he stands there.</p><p>Pushing the glass door open, he’s suddenly right outside her apartment, nothing but a door between them. Nothing can stop his hand from rising and knocking.</p><p>The door’s lock disengages, and his heart rate triples. When she opens the door she’s adjusting the strap of her backpack with an air of expectation. He didn’t text her, why would she be expecting him?</p><p>“Ready! Do you know when wheels up is sch–” Mac clears his throat, not to interrupt her, but to clear the rising panic before he can choke on it.  </p><p>“Mac.”</p><p>She’s sounds surprised, which means she wasn’t expecting him, which means she’s going somewhere he doesn’t know about with someone he likely doesn’t know about either. He needs more information. Now.</p><p>“Uh, going somewhere?”</p><p>“Matty called,” she explains, and his brows furrow.</p><p>“She didn’t call–”</p><p>“Just me,” she cuts in and he looks back to her sharply. “Hacker stuff, you wouldn’t understand.”</p><p>“Oh, uh, I can give you a lift to Phoenix.” The offer comes out even, but something is happening in his stomach, like a wrestling match with chainsaws.  </p><p>“Thanks but she’s sending an agent over. Leaving straight for the airport.” And then she's pushing him forward so she can exit and lock her door but Mac barely moves. The word airport rings in his ears and every muscle goes unnaturally still.</p><p>The panic from earlier comes back, this time slamming through his veins like a pathogen. They have other analysts, Matty didn’t have to call her in but she did, and she’s sending Riley somewhere far enough away it requires a plane.</p><p>“How long will you be gone?” His voice trembles and Mac curses himself.</p><p>“Don’t know yet. Damage is pretty severe, might take a few days.”</p><p>“Well, they’ve got the best hacker in the world on their side, I think they’ll be fine.” It’s a phrase spoken from muscle memory, his eyes cutting to stare out the apartment’s front door.</p><p>A few days. A lot can happen in a few days. She could find she likes wherever Matty is sending her more than LA, end up wanting a transfer. She could meet someone worth staying wherever for. She could die.</p><p>His jaw clenches and suddenly there is not a single goddamn thing he wants more than to drag her across town so they can play skee-ball. For a wild, inexplicable moment he imagines the ring in his pocket on her finger as she rolls perfect hits every time. The storm in his gut gives a heaving lurch forward and it nearly throws him off balance.</p><p>“Well–”</p><p>“I just–”</p><p>They stumble over each other and he takes the momentary distraction to rally his thoughts.</p><p>He just didn’t know. Didn’t know they were living in a universe where he had a chance to love her like he’d wanted to since the day they met. He hadn’t known what that feeling in his chest was back then, god he was so <em>young</em>, but he’d figure it out a year later.</p><p>She’s his best friend, the smartest person he’s ever met, the <em>toughest</em> person he’s ever met. She’s also unconscionably kind, unerringly considerate, and neverendingly loyal. Of course he loves her, <em>of course he does.</em> God, he doesn’t know how she doesn’t know that if he’d known, if he’d had even the hint of an idea he would’ve––</p><p>“Riley,” his voice is heavy, the storm in his stomach a vortex now. “I didn’t… I didn’t <em>know</em>.” He tries to say it right, say it in a way that she’ll understand that he didn’t know she was an option; didn’t know he was allowed love her like that.</p><p>And then she’s turning her head, telling him it’s okay, that they’re good.</p><p>But it’s not, and they’re not because it’s just hit him that he wants her with every fucking fiber of his being, and she won’t even look at him. He stutters through half formed words, an ocean trying to force its way out through the head of pin, but nothing lands.</p><p>And then she’s running.</p><p>“Riley!” Her name rips its way from his throat, the sudden feeling of desperation catching him hard in the side.</p><p>He stumbles, hand flying out to steady himself against the wall. He’s breathing hard, eyes flying to watch retreating break lights. The SUV vanish with a right turn and it makes his knees shake.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Mac + Desi</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Some convos and Desi-love because that woman is a badass and deserves more.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you to everyone who has been so lovely in their reviews, it for sures motivates me, and lets me know I'm not like destroying these character with my cobbled together google knowledge XD</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Mac makes it home that night there isn’t much more he can do but lock himself behind his bedroom and bathroom door, slide down the wall, and stare blankly ahead for sixteen straight hours.</p><p>The first time he’d done this was just after his mom got diagnosed.</p><p>He’d settled into the treehouse then, retreating to the safest place he knew to process what his grandfather, his mother, the doctors, and everyone else had told him. Time didn’t register, his subconscious too busy identifying and sorting through facts, his conscious mind too busy plotting every data point along the x and y axis.</p><p>Eventually, after the relevant points were plotted, he’d had a solid scatter plot model. From there it was just a matter of using the least square method to produce the line of best fit for all information available.</p><p>So he’d run it, for 19 hours alone in a treehouse. His grandfather’s hoarse yell had broken him from the stupor, results swirling in his head long after they’d made it back to the house. That day, calculating what he knew, what he’d researched, what everyone had said, he’d found the line of best.</p><p>
  <em>Death within 2.5 years.</em>
</p><p>They’d bury her a little over two years later.</p><p>His brain repeated this method over the course of his life. Something would press in, take precedence over everything else. A problem too large, too complicated, or too painful to ignore, something that demanded concentrated effort.</p><p>By instinct he would find a safe place and hunker down. A few hours, and once, memorably, <em>days</em>, would pass. Eventually he would crawl out of his own head, an empirically supported answer to whatever question he was looking for in hand.</p><p>That answer, once he had it, was one he never wavered from, because he knew what it had to withstand. A consistent and thorough dismemberment of a peer review, written by the worst critics in his head.</p><p>The second he’d left Riley’s apartment he’d felt the instinct kick in. The whole walk home he’d plotted exactly where he would hunker down, went so far as to text Matty that he’d be taking that day off she was forcing on him and wouldn’t be coming in tomorrow. After reaching the house and noting Bozer’s consistent snores, he’d beelined for his bathroom, locking the bedroom door as he passed through it.</p><p>He then suspended his perception of time and space and dug deeper into the progress he’d begun on the plane earlier. It hadn’t been a thorough investigation then because the space hadn’t been secure. But this was home, his home, maybe one day <em>their</em> home.</p><p>Bozer doesn’t knocked on his bedroom door the following morning, instead nothing but the distant echo of the front door opening and closing tells Mac he’s left.</p><p>By the time he crawls out, it’s to a dozen messages from Desi and a handful from Bozer. Mac scrolls through his phone, double checking that Riley hadn’t emailed him, or IMed him, or used the secure Phoenix app she’d built to contact him. She hadn’t. Tossing his phone on the bed, he takes a deep breath in, mind unusually quiet in the aftermath of sixteen hours engaged in pure thought.</p><p>He’d gotten his answer. The steps forward have already been plotted. There is nothing left to consider or reconsider. In fact, he’d walked away with not one, but <em>two</em> empirically supported answers.</p><p>The first was one he’d already known: mental stability compromised, continuation without treatment outcomes grim.</p><p>But the second, the second has him just as jittery as it did resolute. It’s a truth he’d probably recognized years ago, but the enormity of it, the sound of rushing air in his ears, the momentary weightlessness as it all settles, that’s knocking him on his ass.</p><p>Riley Davis is his line of best fit.</p><p>With that answer, never to be doubted again, his first step is clear.</p><p>
  <em>We should talk.</em>
</p><p>He knows its ominous, but he also knows she kissed his cheek and told him to do whatever he thought was right. Now, <em>finally</em>, he is.</p><p>
  <em>Where?</em>
</p><p>He knows why he picked it, but it still feels shocking. Seeing it in black text on his phone, stark to the white behind it, makes it feel real. It is real, but maybe that’s the worst and best thing about it.</p><p>
  <em>Cemetery?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Be there in an hour. </em>
</p><p>And that’s what he loves about Desi. Desi cuts through the bullshit. She doesn’t coddle, doesn’t gladhand. She accepts reality for what it is and moves on, unlikely to ponder the alternatives. When she smiles at him, kisses his cheek and tells him to do what he thinks is right, she means it.</p><p>He’s sitting when she approaches, just like all those months ago. They’d been in a better place then, or at least it had felt like it. The thing with this thing between them is that Desi always felt like a friend, no matter what they were calling themselves that day.</p><p>He takes a page out of her handbook and goes straight for the soft tissue.</p><p>“Why’d you stay so long?”</p><p>“Mac–”</p><p>“I’m not being self-deprecating,” he cuts in, the memory of their many conversations regarding such things haunting them both. “You don’t love me, but you stayed anyway. Why?” She looks away, black hair fluttering in the wind.</p><p>There is something ageless about Desi Nguyen. The belied strength beneath tattooed skin didn’t lessen the air she projected, just strengthened it. People stopped to stare at her, not just because she is a beautiful woman, but because she is powerful and anyone that looks at her knows that.</p><p>“I do love you, Mac,” she says it carefully and he snorts.</p><p>“But not like that,” he finishes for her.</p><p>“No, not like that,” her eyes turn to stare him down. “But you don’t love me like that either, do you?”</p><p>He breaks eye contact, breath caught in his throat. No, no he didn’t.</p><p>“Doesn’t answer my question.” She nods to capitulate, taking a moment before responding.</p><p>“When we first met, you were in so much pain.” Mac rears back, eyes flying wide. “I’m a protector, Mac, always have been. When someone is hurt, when they need help, need to be protected, I just <em>know</em>, deep in my bones.” His eyes fill to the brim with tears, but he doesn’t jerk the other way, just lets the first one fall. “I’ve never, <em>not</em>, felt that with you, Mac.”</p><p>“You stayed because of pity,” he gets out, voice thick.</p><p>“Love. I just told you that, idiot.” Her harsh tone makes him laugh, but it gets caught on the way back out. She sighs and tries again. “By the time I realized I didn’t love you like that, I couldn’t see a way to end it and not…”</p><p>“Break me more?” He asks dubiously.</p><p>“I wanted to help you,” she says, frustration clear. “The hits just kept coming, ones I couldn’t take for you, couldn’t protect you from and I just…”</p><p>“None of this is your fault. You didn’t fail to protect me.”</p><p>“I know that,” she snaps, eyes coming up angry and teary. “But it took you so long to let me in and I was afraid if we broke up, you’d push me away and end up alone again. And this time, this time you had so much more pain than before. I was scared, Mac.”</p><p>He’d healed so much in his time with Desi. She saw the world from a fundamentally different angle, and it afforded him insight into what he did and who he was that changed his entire world view. But regardless, being reminded he is fundamentally fucked-up has him feeling bitter even though he knows she’s right, knows she’s trying to choose her words carefully, for his sake.</p><p>And she knows him too damn well. If they’d called it off for good, if she’d pulled away and out of their relationship, the first thing he would’ve done was push her out until he was alone again.</p><p>On the heels of this realization, furry sweeps in.</p><p>“That’s not fair, Desi,” she turns sharp eyes to him.</p><p>“<em>Ma–”</em></p><p>“To <em>you</em>, Desi, that’s not fair to you.” He can’t help the bite in the words, tears a constant stream.</p><p>God, how long had she been stuck in this toxic cycle he just kept starting back up? How much of her time and patience and love had he wasted languishing in his own goddamn pain that he couldn’t let her go? How many times did she put him first, tried to meet her needs in other ways when he was too preoccupied or too dense to meet them like he should have?</p><p>Desi Nguyen is one of the most amazing women he has ever had the pleasure to meet and the honor to date, and he’d made her fucking miserable.</p><p>They sit there, each caught in the enormity of that statement, the enormity of what the past few years had turned them into. And he has to say it.</p><p>“You shouldn’t have stayed just for me. You deserve so much more than that.” That’s an understatement, she deserved more than he could ever give her.</p><p>Sometimes he thinks about relationships like magnets, but sometimes, sometimes he thinks about them as animal classifications. Some species, fundamentally, biologically, are simply incompatible. It didn’t matter how hard someone tried, how much is understood, intellectually, about the differences, the species simply cannot coexist in that way. And that’s okay, that should be okay.</p><p>Maybe one day he’d believe that for himself.</p><p>“Why did you stay, Mac?” That’s a complicated question he can’t even begin to explain out loud. It took him and his brain sixteen hours to understand it, no way he’d get it out in under that <em>verbally</em>.  </p><p>“I…” He wonders where he can even start. Despite being a genius, not even he can find his head when it’s that far up his ass. “I was lonely.” He settles on and it feels so utterly insufficient, and yet it somehow covers all of his basis.</p><p>“That might be the most honest thing you’ve ever said to me.”</p><p>“It’s not,” he has to tell her, she has to know. “You’re one of the best things that’s ever happened to me, you know that?”</p><p>She sits there, speechless, eyes bright. Mac meets her gaze head on, her complete bafflement another reminder at how badly he’d fucked this all up. When a tear escapes she brushes it off harshly and squeezes her eyes shut, giving a firm nod.</p><p>“This is probably stupid, but, uh, I’ll always be your friend,” she stutters out, cheeks tinged pink.</p><p>“It’s not stupid, its more than I deserve.”</p><p>“Mac,” she reaches a hand out, hesitating a moment before something flashes in her eyes. “Maybe it is more than you deserve, but the only thing that should tell you is that you have people who care about you enough to let you try.” It comes out a little clunky, her words stumbling over each other but the thought lights something in him up.</p><p>“Are you–I mean, will you… stay?” She looks confused at the prospect and pain begins to build somewhere deep in his chest.</p><p>“Of course I’m staying, you dumbass. You think I’m going to let a <em>man</em> run me off from the best employee health plan I’ve ever had?”</p><p>“Well I did ruin your life.”</p><p>She punches him in the shoulder, a tension releasing that changes everything about her. He smiles wide, standing as she does, and following her to the parking area nearest the bench.</p><p>“Psssh, not everything’s about you, MacGyver.”</p><p>“Yeah, thank Einstein for that.” Truer words, truer words.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Questions, concerns, comments?</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Matty</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Matty Webber wants 0 children. Matty Webber has 5 children.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I love Matty. I need a gif of her unimpressed look.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There is a fine line between parenting a team and leading a team, and those distinct edges grow cloudier and cloudier every day. When Matty started at the Phoenix Foundation, she’d raised a kid already. She had not, in any way shape or form, wanted to raise four more. She’d rather not get involved at all.</p><p>It’s not like she’s blind, of course Matilda Fucking Webber knew the heart-eyes flying around; the odd triangle, but not a triangle. It was more like a line. Blondie can’t even support leaning at an angle, much less two complicated women.</p><p>It had been her hope that Desi would see that as well-intentioned as she was, staying with Mac out of a misguided attempt to protect him would end like a missile strike. Then, by natural course, Riley would be there, be his rock like she has been for the past year. Mac would mourn the relationship, things would be rocky, but then, suddenly, Mac would wake up and see what everyone else saw. They’d dance around each other for a while before the final straw, Desi would be surprisingly supportive, and they could call it a day.</p><p>Instead, Jack died and dragged every peaceful-future fantasy to the grave with him.</p><p>Matty ran every office she’d ever had like a living, breathing organism. She’s a firm believer in efficiency, respect, and personal boundaries. She knows the best way to get results is to take care of your people, get them what they need, and every now and then remind them that there is a god that can taketh away as easily as giveth, and that god is her.</p><p>It worked, until Phoenix.</p><p>She remembers the beginning vividly, the call, the coup, the jack-assery, literally and figuratively. Those damn kids got under her skin, she couldn’t pinpoint how or why, but they did. Jack had eased the way, loved them like his own and more or less demanded Matty do the same.</p><p>Now he’s gone, and Matty is left alone to pick up everyone’s pieces while pretending none of the shattered glass on the floor belongs to her.</p><p>It brings her to the here and now. Matty had been so sure she could handle those edges gone cloudy, but as she stares at her teams’ retreating backs, she realizes she’s out of her depth. She spies Bozer having a breakdown, Mac in a haze of stupid, Desi blissfully and intentionally ignorant, and Riley nothing but a streak with a dust cloud dissipating behind her.</p><p>As if to drive it home, Matty thinks back to the look on her hacker’s face throughout the mission debrief. When it had finally ended and all dismissed, Matty nearly expected the girl to bypass the door entirely and put a Riley-shaped hole in the side of the wall.</p><p>Luck isn’t something Matty believes in, but damn if she doesn’t believe in exploiting every opportunity that comes your way.</p><p>“Webber.” when Aretha Kasongo shows up on her screen an hour later, it’s irritation that hits Matty first. Then her old friend starts talking. “DOD facility got hacked in Belarus.” Skipping preamble had always been her nature, but at the sinister curl of her lips, Matty remembers why she enjoys working with the woman.</p><p>“You don’t write, you don’t call,” Matty begins, voice deadpan.</p><p>“I’ve been busy,” she snips.</p><p>“Treating those curls?” Aretha smiles wide, hands coming up to touch the natural afro.</p><p>“I gave up in this damn heat.”</p><p>“You grew up in the Congo,” Matty challenges and the laugh her old friend lets out is genuine.</p><p>“You got a hacker to spare?” Her face is passive. If Matty says no, Aretha knows eight other people to call. But the thing is, she does have a hacker, not one easily spared, but one in need of a fucking vacation.</p><p>“I do. And, uh, I have a side-job for you.”</p><p>“I’m a bit backed up for a side-hustle, Matilda.”</p><p>“Trust me, you’ll like this one.”</p><p>Riley Davis hasn’t stopped taking hard knocks to the jaw since puberty. A beautiful woman in a world of wolves, ex-convict with warning labels, <em>and</em> a stone-cold bitch? She struck Matty in all the right ways since the day they met. Riley got shit done when the world was ending, soldiered on through every loss, every abandonment, every time her friends forgot to even ask if she was alright.</p><p>Matty hadn’t been much better.</p><p>Riley always makes it seem like everything is good, always, no matter the hits she took that day. And Matty chose to believe her because Blondie was usually facing another life-altering tragedy and took precedence.</p><p>So, it is with great and fantastic bliss that Matty calls her hacker and tells her to get the fuck out of dodge.</p><p>Riley needs some time to process whatever it is she’s got with Mac, because that needs to be her decision, and it needs to be genuine. Working in the field as long as she had, Matty’s picked up on a thing or two about chemistry and compatibility. Riley and Mac had always been high in both. They were different enough to remain mysteries to one another, but similar enough so as not to grate. They’d been a perfect team since nearly day one.</p><p>But as Matty hangs up on Riley she knows things have changed.</p><p>The recording’s contents had been a shock but not a surprise. She’d watched the footage from that day, Riley got her his computer’s hard drive and Murdock, with all his obsessiveness, had recorded the whole thing. The look on her agent’s face when Bozer’s voice started speaking, when her own voice played over the recording, it made something in Matty’s chest clench.</p><p>Mac hadn’t always done right by Riley. It was never malicious, never intentional, but like Matty, the man chose to accept her ‘<em>I’m fine’ </em>lines at face value. He’d left her without a word more than once. But despite all his blundering, he truly is a deeply caring and affectionate individual.</p><p>That’s the problem.</p><p>With a ring for another woman, <em>Christ</em> Matty can’t even begin to rant about that toxic gumbo, and the way it went down, the stage is set for an unfolding of epic confusion. Matty knows her team, she knows them through and through, so when she thinks about the future, she thinks about how each will handle the shift in dynamic.</p><p>The most-likely future in which neither Riley nor Mac get the time or space they need, as foretold by Matty Webber:</p><p>Anything Riley says or does from this point on will be calculated, maybe even disingenuous. Her distance from Mac will likely lead to distance from the team as a whole. Her relationship with Desi will be believed unsalvageable, despite Matty’s suspicion that this development would be a godsend for Desi. With Bozer in mourning himself, Riley will have no one to turn to, no one to talk to about the hurricane that just swept through her life.</p><p>Aretha is an opportunity. Riley will be on her way to meet the most eerily penetrating stare one can be subjected to. She trusts Aretha, methods counter to her own regardless, she thinks Riley needs meddling in a way Matty just isn’t built for. Which means leaving Matty to look after Mac, well, that’s gonna be a hell of a thing.</p><p>All of this, born from a massive miscalculation. As reality settles in, Matty figures it will either resolve itself entirely, or tear apart her team. Only time will tell.</p><p>“You can’t just send her away and hope all turns out well, Matilda.” His accent still makes her eye twitch.</p><p>When the team had broken up, she’d barely missed a beat. Its just who she is. Matilda Webber had everything and more against her to make it in the world, and she’d overcome every single obstacle. The next challenge thrown her way, to break up the team, to move on, didn’t feel like a next step, but more reshuffling of personnel.</p><p>It took her a while to realize it was the simple fact she could not accept, under any long-term circumstances, the idea of never working with her team again. She’d been right, and they were back together. She suffers the consequences every day: living with the fun uncle come in to ruin her carefully controlled routines.</p><p>“She deserves some distance to lick her wounds, Taylor.”</p><p>“No doubt. Wounds of the heart, they say, are–”</p><p>“Is there a good reason why you’re still here?” Matty refuses to defend her decision to him. The ex-mercenary may own them financially, but those kids are her team and she’ll do what’s best. He can take his Cockney cockiness and shove it where the tea don’t shine.</p>
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